Never Gamble Your Heart (The Secret Society of Governess Spies #2)

Chapter 27

T he next morning, watery, after-the-storm light streamed through Frankie’s window, illuminating the piles of papers scattered across her chamber. She had been awake for hours, working by candlelight and tugging on her hair as she paced back and forth. Perhaps there was no connection between the grooms other than Rockford’s and she had set herself on a fool’s errand.

After the library incident at the Coswolds’, Frankie had awkwardly flirted and batted her eyelashes while wrapped in a shawl from her hostess to conceal her dress, and made what society would consider the most outrageous comments about women in mathematics. She had even challenged one young man to a problem-solving contest and had defeated him spectacularly, to the great embarrassment of many men in the crowd.

She had stayed close to Madam Margaret, and after another hour of poetry, had pleaded a headache, and they’d left. The entire carriage ride home, she had fought to keep from blushing as she vividly recalled her kiss with Jasper in the library, how the rasp of his chin had felt on her sensitive skin, how the wet of his tongue had drawn chills from her flesh, how his large hands had cupped and squeezed and stroked until she’d been nearly aflame.

She had held close to her heart the look of resignation on his face when he’d said he liked her as she was, even if she’d found it nearly impossible to believe. Men like Jasper, who had the world at their fingertips, did not choose women like Frankie.

Jasper had promised to keep his hands off her in the future because she was unmarried. Only a cad dallied with an unmarried maiden. In their society a woman was punished harshly for an affair, especially if she had a child out of wedlock. Jasper may have had a colorful reputation, but he was no cad.

Frankie agreed that it was important that Jasper keep his hands to himself; she did not want anything interfering with her plan to act as bait—especially not smoldering looks from her benefactor.

But there was another reason it was best they did not kiss again, and it had nothing to do with her being an unmarried woman, and everything to do with self-preservation. When the Dowry Thieves’ leader was caught, Frankie’s ruse would be over and she would leave, and Jasper would move on to his next widow. But would she be able to move on? Despite the leagues of men blinded by her financial worth, Frankie knew that without her pretend dowry she would be just Frankie again: plain, outspoken, intimidating. There would not be anyone else for her. She worried that if she continued down this beautiful, heart-racing path with Jasper, more than her pride would hurt when it all ended.

She had won the poker game against Jasper, and his intriguing offer of a marriage of convenience was off the table, especially now that he was publicly funding her dowry. Frankie was honest enough with herself to admit that a small part of her wouldn’t have hated marrying him. Sure, he was exasperating and high-handed and obscenely confident, but he was also thoughtful and clever and terribly arousing.

It was for the best that they had taken this avenue instead. Jasper may find her eccentricities amusing now, but Frankie knew that over time, he would grow weary and resentful of her awkwardness. In her experience, men always thought they wanted novelty until they actually experienced it.

Frankie was lying supine on the bed with her head hanging over the edge, doubting her “expert” ability to piece together a pattern from the grooms’ financials, when there came a rap at her door. Before she could jump to her feet Cecelia burst into the chamber in a whirlwind of teal taffeta and adolescent energy.

“Miss Turner, I have been dying to hear about the literary event and how Uncle Jas—how the men at the party reacted to your gold dress.” She paused, and between one breath and another took in the papers and ledgers scattered across every surface in the chamber and exclaimed, “Whatever are you doing?”

Frankie rolled to her stomach and propped her chin on her hand. “These are the financial papers of the men who’ve put the ‘troublemaking’ women in compromising situations and forced them into marriage. They all have memberships to your uncle’s club.”

“That is why you are here, isn’t it?” Cecelia reached for one of the papers and frowned down at it. “There must be a hundred numbers in these columns. You know Uncle Jasper has nothing to do with this. He would never stand for such a thing.”

“I know that now. It is why I am looking for another commonality among them, although I am beginning to doubt there is one.”

Cecelia lifted an open ledger from the small writing desk and stuck her tongue between her teeth as she squinted at it. “How did you get all these ledgers, Miss Turner? Are you some sort of spy?”

Frankie sat on the bed and nudged her spectacles into place. “I have a friend who gave them to me.”

Cecelia gave a low whistle, revealing her common roots, and said, “You must have important friends.”

In fact, Frankie had very few friends besides Fidelia, and she could not tell Cecelia she actually had been a spy employed by the woman who’d given her the financials. “The ledgers need to be returned to their owners shortly, and then I will lose all opportunity to find a deeper connection.”

Cecelia ran her finger down a column of goods and numbers that belonged to Lord Nettles, a man who’d once possessed a vast fortune before he had dwindled it away at the card tables. “‘Tallow, four shillings six pence; tea, thirty shillings; gold earrings, twenty pounds; fish, twenty-eight shillings; three bolts of French damask, forty-two shillings.’ Heavens, this man spends a small fortune each month.”

Frankie brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “And from what I have seen, that is only a quarter of what some of the noble households spend. Before Lord Nettles lost his fortune, he—did you say gold earrings? I do not remember reading that.”

Frankie slid off the bed and hurried over to Cecelia’s side. Cecelia pointed at the spiky handwriting. “Perhaps it was for his wife,” Cecelia suggested. “Oh wait, these are the men who later married. A mistress?”

Frankie was already deep in thought as she hopped over a pile of splayed ledgers and snatched up a stack of loose papers that were gently lifting in the breeze entering through the cracked window, the rain-washed scent only slightly tainted by the foul odor of the Thames. She flipped through to the records that belonged to Lord Sandington. “Gold-and-ruby necklace,” she murmured. She had not thought anything of it; wealthy men often bought jewelry. But now…

Frankie was barely aware of Cecelia leaving the room, or of the minutes passing as she hastily made notes on a slip of paper, her handwriting so poor that only she would be able to decipher it. An hour passed, or perhaps two, and only Cecelia’s return dragged her from the records back into the present.

“You look positively wild, Miss Turner,” Cecelia said as she sat in a sliver of empty space on the bed. “What have you discovered?”

Frankie’s eyes focused on the girl in front of her and she whispered, “Holy Queen V, Cecelia! It is the jewelry!”

“What is the jewelry?”

Frankie pressed her fingers to her temples. She was so light-headed with excitement that she felt faint. Or perhaps she felt faint because she had forgotten to break her fast. “People have been known to hide indiscretions or illegal purchases in their ledgers by coding them as something else.” Even Jasper had done it, although his was a charitable donation rather than a more insidious secret. “Every single one of these men, every single one , has purchased an extraordinary amount of jewelry over the past twenty-four months, bought more horses than a stable could hold, and lost innumerable sums at the gambling tables.”

“I still do not understand.”

“Jewelry and gambling and horses are expensive,” Frankie continued. “They are easily accepted as standard purchases and losses and would not raise any flags from a property manager or anyone else who might look at the ledgers. Even I missed their importance the first time around. The purchases allow a person to claim large losses while keeping their ledger totals accurate and seemingly proper.”

Cecelia’s eyes flickered in understanding. “But they didn’t buy jewelry and horses, or lose the money gambling, did they?”

“No.” The purchases hadn’t paid for the leader of the Dowry Thieves to arrange a marriage, either. They dated too far back. In fact, in each ledger the first notably large “purchase” had taken place in January two years ago. What had happened in January that had spurred all twelve grooms to begin deducting large, secretive amounts of money from their estates? What were they hiding?

The mystery was too much for Frankie to bear. “Fetch your cloak, Cecelia. We are visiting Hookham’s Circulating Library for answers.”

“Sorry, Miss Turner, but we cannot.”

Frankie’s head snapped up. “Why not?”

“You have an entire sitting room filled with suitors, and I have been sent to fetch you. Uncle Jasper is in a horrid temper.”

Frankie blinked like an owl emerging from sleep. Although she’d had four Seasons, she’d never had a single gentleman caller. She had forgotten all about the possibility of morning visits from potential suitors. “Blast!”

“You cannot go downstairs like that!” Cecelia exclaimed when Frankie made her way to the door. “You have ink all over your hands, your hair is a fright, and you are wearing your ugliest governess gown.” Cecelia sighed heavily as she grabbed Frankie’s hand and towed her down the corridor, but there was a smile on her lips when she said, “Come along, Miss Turner. I shall see you fixed up. It is time to make a man jealous.”

“I am aiming for a compromising situation, not jealousy.”

“Oh, right. Yes, that is what I meant.”